Small Kindnesses

I read a poem this past week which was so clear and simple, I wanted to share it with you. Yes, you have to read a poem but it is an easy one to read!

Small Kindnesses
by Danusha Laméris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

Those last four lines are so powerful, the idea of the holy in these brief exchanges of kindness. Every week I ask my first-grade catechists what they’ve done to be kind in the past week. Some have hugged their mom, smiled at their cousin, or run to retrieve a diaper for their baby brother. None of them have raised a million dollars to fight pediatric cancer or led a demonstration calling for us to better stewardship of the environment. They understand, without anyone telling them that kindness is as simple as a smile, or saying “bless you” to a stranger, or letting someone else have that parking spot.

I know I work with kind people. Recognize the “little” kindnesses you give and receive this week. They are holy moments imbued with the grace of God.